So I figure this goes here, although depending on how the discussion goes, it might need to go to GD, or even MPSIMS.
I was reading this thread because I didn’t know the answer, actually, and had just dismissed the issue of President Obama’s citizenship out of hand.
Reading the thread lead to the Government website, which divides up into three catagories by the law before a certain date, and after a certain date- the way that children of a US citizen and a foriegn national, married or not, are granted citizenship.
Apparently, the legal issue is that in the year Mr. Obama was born, in between the dates the laws were modified, his mother was too young to be eligible to give birth to a citizen herself, if the parent was a foreign national, as the US citizen parent needed, at that time, to have spent at least 5 years in the United States after the age of 14, and she wasn’t yet 19 when she gave birth, so that wasn’t possible, even if she never left the US!
However, being born in the US would render this moot, thus the uproar about the birth certificate…
Now, the law has been changed, but the issue would still come up for someone who gave birth to a child where the US citizen parent was under the age of 16, as all they did was reduce the time after age 14 to 2 years instead of 5 years.
So, for the first time, I understand why they care about the birth record. I never understood. If he was born now, wouldn’t matter where, it would just matter that she was over 16… The law does not appear to have been adjusted retroactively.
I feel rather the way I felt when the Supreme Court affirmed the Bush Presidency. Something is wrong… And I haven’t accounted for it in my world-view…
Let me see if I can figure out what is wrong:
I can easily see this happening with a young US man in another country, and not unheard of by a young US woman in another country, although it would be a bit more complex. Vacation birth for her, vacation fling for him, unintended, anywhere else.
I can sort of understand the intent (assuming some age over 21, or something) that if the individual who had left the country for so long intentionally, then citizenship shouldn’t be granted the child, but having a law that applies that to young parents ought to have a stated loophole for that, or our whole basis for government- the citizens- seems to have been rendered dubious to me by this point of law…
And it seems pretty crazy to me that any child of a US woman born in another country, even if she is a US passport-holder, is not eligible automatically for citizenship by virtue of the parent’s age! What if dad was an illegal immigrant who impregnates a young teen in the US, and baby is born on vacation in another country, to her, with her family present- no one knowing where he is, what country he is in, or with any actual knowledge of his citizenship. Would the baby have to stay there, while they all, including poor teen mom, left to honor their own entry visas to the foreign country?
With the young father impregnating a citizen of another country on vacation, there is more of an argument for the baby to be the citizen of that country, as likely the father wouldn’t even be aware of the child- but what if? He has no parental rights to the kid?
I am, to use another poster’s phrase, gobsmacked!